Hughes wins $18M private 5G contract with US Navy

Broadband provider Hughes won an $18 million Department of Defense (DoD) contract to deploy a standalone 5G network at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington state.

Hughes will connect the DoD base with a secure 5G network to support operations, maintenance, and flight traffic management, utilising spectrum from connectivity company Dish Wireless.

The work is in connection to an on-going DoD 5G experimentation led by the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam.

“Over the course of this three-year project, we will demonstrate for the US Department of Defense how 5G infrastructure from Hughes – including a packet processing core, radio access, edge cloud, security, and network management – can power the resilient networking necessary to transform base operations,” said Rajeev Gopal, vice president of Advanced Programs at Hughes.

“Today’s walkie-talkies, paper-trails, and telephone conversations will be replaced with a private, secure 5G network over which air station processes and systems will be automated and continuously optimised,” he added.

He also told Breaking Defence: “For DoD applications, 5G needs high levels of cyber security. Stand-alone 5G networks, like the Hughes network, are inherently more secure than older networks where 5G is added onto the existing network,”

Rick Lober, vice president and general manager at Hughes Defense, added: “We look forward to showcasing our capabilities in secure management of a 5G stand-alone deployment with advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning for ongoing enhancement and increasing efficiencies.”

The Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) was issued through the Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP) consortium, a project aimed to engage industry and academia in developing mature technologies in the field of information warfare that enhance Navy and Marine Corps mission effectiveness.